English and Asian Flavor in Russian Advertising of the Far East

Bilingual creativity in Russia: English‐Russian language play

“…A corpus of over 100 of the most representative examples formed the basis of the study, focusing on those spheres where, as the data suggest, the incidence of English‐Russian language play is among the highest today. The data from advertising, for which bilingual language play is most typical, were excluded because, first, English‐Russian interaction in this domain has been investigated elsewhere (Ustinova & Bhatia : 500–502; Proshina & Ustinova : 44–46) and, second, because English in advertising, including advertising in Russia, is exploited primarily for its positive connotations, which have been well documented in world Englishes (see the overview in Bhatia & Ritchie ). The three groups of examples, which were selected for this paper with the intention of a more comprehensive description of the formal and functional aspects of English‐Russian language play include popular fiction and non‐fiction titles (Table ), linguistic landscape units, such as shop names and restaurant names (Table ), and entertaining TV show titles (Table ).…”

“…Regarding the linguistic landscape examples in Table , most of them were collected in Moscow, though a very similar corpus was compiled by Proshina and Ustinova () in smaller cities and towns in the Far East of Russia; thus, the bilingual creativity patterns seem to be universal for linguistic landscapes in different regions of Russia. As for the TV show titles, all of them were picked from TV guides of the largest Russian broadcasting companies (except for the MTV and MuzTV, whose audiences are smaller, but which are hugely popular among younger Russians) with national coverage.…”

“…This aspect of English‐Russian interaction has received less attention so far and is at the initial stages of investigation, dealing mainly with those spheres where bilingual Russian speakers switch regularly between Russian and English or where the domain itself entails extensive interaction with English‐language sources. This includes publications on English‐Russian bilingual children in bilingual families (Chirsheva ), on the speech patterns of Russian teachers and students of English (Sichyova ; Chirsheva ), on advertising in Russia (Ustinova & Bhatia ; Proshina & Ustinova ), on modern Russian music industry, including pop and rock‐music (Eddy ), on fashion and ‘glossy’ magazine publishing (Isaeva ), on some aspects of business discourse (Isakova ) and others (for an overview, see Eddy ). It is essential that because of the narrow range of intra‐national functioning of English in Russia, fully‐fledged, balanced and productive English‐Russian bilingualism, in spite of its exponential growth, remains largely an individual or group phenomenon.…”

“…Some aspects of the creative functioning of English in Russia in advertising have been touched upon in Ustinova and Bhatia (: 500–502) and in Proshina and Ustinova (: 44–46). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that in recent years creativity involving the use of English has become a crucial part of Russian‐based discourse in various domains beyond the well‐documented sphere of advertising; therefore, it calls for a more in‐depth analysis of the topic.…”

Language variation in the advertising discourse: a cross-cultural approach

“…On the other hand, language mixing of some kind in advertising texts have been pointed out and described by a lot of researchers. They emphasize graphic innovations (Ivanova, Moshcheva, 2011;Myachinskaya, 2008) and vocabulary intrusions (Proshina, Ustinova, 2012;Ryabuhina, 2014;Santello, 2015). They also claim that mixed language messages on public display signs play an important role in changing the language landscape of modern cities (Kirilina, 2013).…”